Miles
I much appreciate the sincere offer, but I am admittedly picky about the wood I use to build stocks. Not to say there is not a serviceable blank or two there, but let me give a quick stock blank tutorial... as this is about dimensional stability it may be a good place to put it...
The center of the tree and even the whole tree in the case of leaning trees is called "reaction wood" and it is different. the fibers are shorter and there are some other cellular differences.
It is weaker and far more prone to problems with internal stresses. There is an interesting bit of trivia that angiosperms (hardwoods to most folks) produce excess reaction wood on the bottom side of affected areas and gymnosperms apply it to the top side. An analogy could be made that hardwoods push up limbs and softwoods pull them up.
This reaction wood in limbs is why limb wood is good for firewood... not blanks...
A quarter-sawn blank is more stable than a board-sawn blank because there is a critical characteristic in wood that causes it to change size in three different directions differently with moisture content changes.
It moves little in length, about 12% in tangential (board-sawn)and about half that in the radial (quarter-sawn) direction. These numbers are for walnut being dried from about 25% moisture content to dry at 6%.
If you think about that you will realize that a board sawn off angle (neither board nor quarter-sawn, just different) will try to do some strange moves if the moisture content changes.
Different woods move differently in relation to moisture changes after drying ("stability in service") and that feature can make a seemingly good wood species a poor choice.
Some species are so stable the difference is nearly moot in their changes. For example mesquite is the most stable wood commonly used for stocks. The difference between radial and tangential shrinkage is almost non-existant at just over 6% in each direction.
The thng that I find shocking of late is the number of Turkish circassian blanks I am seeing that are in no way perfect blanks being sold at exhibition grade, PLUS prices. Extreme runout through the wrist and all sorts of true defects and the blanks are selling for over two grand! For two-piecers!
I saw a blank a while back with 45% grain sideways through the wrist and it sold for $2,800 just because it was heavily marbled with black. The stockmaker inletted a cylinder of straight-grained english around the stock bolt to use it. It might not break. But $2,800?
Anyway, back to the point about small trees... Smaller trees produce less stable wood than older, simply because the wood is older and less affected by wind and other stresses.
Another interesting bit of trivia before I wind up this little ramble <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/blush.gif" alt="" /> is that fiddleback wood is stronger and usually more stable than straight-grained wood of the same species.
art
